How to earn money fast? Build a Windows Phone app and get £60,000

Microsoft is looking to encourage developers to produce apps for its Windows Phone platform, paying out vast amounts of money to get devs on board.

With the Windows Phone ecosystem still struggling to gain a serious grip on the market, being dwarfed by iOS and Android, latest reports have claimed that Microsoft is giving developers up to $100,000 (£63,000) to get high-profile app developers to turn to the Windows platform.

Sadly, this isn’t everyone’s answer for how to make money fast. Microsoft is said to be saving the big bucks to target developers with a proven track record of crafting popular, profitable applications for rival platforms, namely those made by Apple and Google.

"My friends in Silicon Valley say Microsoft has been offering $100,000 or more to companies that will build Windows Phone apps,” a reporter for Bloomberg said in a recent article. They stressed that Microsoft has paid key name developers more than $100,000 to get them to develop for Windows Phone.

Although the Windows Phone platform now has more than 145,000 apps, it still lags a long way behind iOS and Android, both of which what are closing in on the 1 million apps milestone. What is more troubling for Microsoft, however, is the continuing lack of high-profile apps that are becoming something of a must have.

With Windows Phone still a system that is frequently overlooked by developers, earlier this year rival BlackBerry suggested that although it will be bringing its BBM system to iOS and Android in app form later this summer, Microsoft’s OS is still too small to be considered.

“When we look at critical masses and we look at other mobile platforms, iOS and Android at this point in time stand out to us,” Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of BlackBerry’s Software Portfolio, told us. “We are not excluding other platforms, it is just our focus needs to be on those that can get BBM to the masses and the data shows that iOS and Android make up the bulk of mobile users around the world.”

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